Tag: Exploring Sansar 2018

Pfaffenthal 1867 – from Second Life to Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fort Thüngen, part of the Pfaffenthal 1867 estate

In July 2015, I wrote at length about Pfaffenthal 1867, a 5-region role-play environment and historical project accurately recreating the City of Luxembourg, circa 1867, and founded by Second Life resident Hauptmann Weydert (Weydert), also known as Pit Vinandy in the physical world.

At the time of my 2015 article, Weydert / Pit and his team were very much focused on the immersive opportunities presented by their environment. Thanks to the fledging work Linden Lab carried out in trying to bring Oculus Rift compatibility to Second Life, Pfaffenthal 1867 was at that time featured as an exhibit hosted by the Luxembourg City History Museum, which gave visitors the opportunity to visit and explore the virtual recreation of Luxembourg using the Oculus Rift or via desktop.

Pfaffenthal 1867, July 2015

In this, the exhibition was part of a broader outreach by the group, with Pit also hosting workshops on virtual environments involving the general public and schools, in association with the Fortress Museum in Luxembourg and the Luxembourg National Museum of History and Art.

I mention all of this because at the start of November, 2018, I dropped into a new experience in Sansar. Called  simply 1867, it is the work of Pit and his team, working under the VR Creative banner, presenting both the next step in Pfaffenthal 1867’s development and an opportunity to renew and further the work in presenting immersive, educational historical recreations to the public.

It’s an ambitious project – possibly the most ambitious experience yet attempted on Sansar. The aim  is to make full use of Sansar’s massive 4km on a side virtual space and offer a fully immersive historical environment for both social and educational use, with high-resolution topographical maps being used to build-out the experience in stages.

1867 in Sansar – a work in progress

Despite being in the early stages of development – many of the buildings that have been placed are little more than blocks awaiting surface detail (or complete replacement) – 1867 is already being promoted to the people of Luxembourg.

Since the start of November, for example, the project has been the focus of a series of weekday sessions at the Forum Geesseknäppchen, a campus occupied by a number of academic institutions in Luxembourg City. As reported by one of the city’s daily newspapers, the Lëtzebuerger Journal, the sessions are intended to encourage local interest in, and potential involvement with, the project, and will continue through until December 14th, 2018.

“We clearly see this as a collaborative project that is about to gradually create this world of 1867,” Vinandy emphasises. Therefore, he expects a strong participation as soon as the project is publicly available. In addition, he hopes for a lively participation of home owners and companies who want to see their part of the city represented.

– Virtual Time Travel, Lëtzebuerger Journal, November 2nd, 2018

1867 in Sansar – a work in progress

In this, 1867 doesn’t sound that different from the public outreach undertaken with Pfaffenthal 1867, however, the opportunity to present richer, more immersive educational opportunities as well as a social VR experience is very much the driving force behind the Sansar development, again as the  Lëtzebuerger Journal notes:

Vinandy sees particular interest for students, students and historians who can fully immerse themselves in the past “For example, we want to specifically invite teaching staff to take their school classes on a journey through time,” he says.

– Virtual Time Travel, Lëtzebuerger Journal, November 2nd, 2018

1867 in Sansar – a work in progress

In order to focus on the project – and as revealed by Jo Yardley in a tweet while I was working on an earlier draft of this article (one pending an opportunity to chat directly with Pit about both 1867 in Sansar and the wider work of VR Creative) – Pfaffenthal 1867 is to be shut down in its entirety from Monday, November 26th, 2018.

This news has been greeted with some surprise, given that Sansar itself has yet to gain lot of capabilities needed for it to become a more rounded immersive experience – such as richly interactive non-player characters or working forms of transport such as trains, horses that can be ridden and boats, all of which would certainly enrich a setting like 1867.  However, these will come in time, and it is going to take time to properly build-out 1867. As such, I doubt the lack of such capabilities or the lack of period clothing are really issues for the project’s development – although the lack of them could initially discourage Second Life users who have engaged in Pfaffenthal 1867 from dipping more than a toe into Sansar and 1867.

What might be of greater concern is how well such a vast setting loads at the client end as it starts to be fleshed-out to the level of detail found in Pfaffenthal 1867 in Second Life. With some quite modest experiences in Sansar already being quite hefty in download size and load time, something on the scale of 4km on a side could prove to be a significant challenge unless Linden Lab have some clever means of more pro-active steaming and loading / caching still to come.

The Virtual Pfaffenthal; Inara Pey, July 2015, on Flickr
Pfaffenthal 1867, July 2015

But, time will tell on that. In the meantime, if you have enjoyed previous visits to Pfaffenthal 1867 and would like to say farewell before it vanishes, can do so between now and Monday, November 26th, 2018. For those in the Second Life 1867 group, and who missed the in-world announcement, there will be a farewell party on Saturday, November 24th, starting at 10:00 SLT, at Café Neuen.

I’ll also hopefully have more on the 1867 project in Sansar as the work progresses, including the outcome of that conversation with Pit.

SLurls and Additional Links

No Spectators 2: a return to SAAM in Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
No Spectators 2: The Temple by David Best

In July, I wrote about the opening of a Sansar experience celebrating No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, an exhibition of art created for the annual Burning Man experiment in community and art held in the Black Rock Desert of north-west Nevada. The experience is a reproduction of a physical world exhibition of the same name, hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) at their Renwick Gallery in Washington DC between (effectively) April 2018 and January 2019 as a part of an overall effort by Intel and SAAM to digitise many of the museum’s 157 million objects and present them through the virtual medium as transformative and engaging educational / cultural experiences.

After the publishing of that review, Jason Gholston, Head of Sansar Studios, indicated to me via Twitter that the experience would be expanded over time, and on Monday, September 24th, the official Sansar Twitter account announced the Second Floor of the No spectators experience has now opened to public visits.

No Spectators 2: The Temple by David Best

The centrepiece of the new exhibition is a reproduction of the interior of the 2018 Temple, as designed from laser cut wood by artists David Best. It is an intricate, beautiful design, the original – as are all Temple builds at Burning Man – put to the torch at the 2018 Burning Man event.

David Best is actually responsible for the designs of around half the Temple built at Burning Man, having created the very first in 2000, working with Jack Haye. At the time, Best had been attending Burning Man for about three years, and wanted to present a piece of art. He was also working with a group of young artists who would be attending that same year. One of these young artists was Michael Hefflin, a 28-year-old motorbike enthusiast who was killed not long before the event, and that first temple became something of a memorial to him and to others.

We built this thing and it became obvious that we were building a tribute to Michael. And as we were making it 100 people came by and added the names of people they’d lost. Then we put some diesel on it and burned it.

– David Best, speaking to The Guardian, February 2015

In 2001, Best was asked by the event’s organisers to build another Temple, and given the Black Rock “city” of the festival had just about everything else except a place of meditation, and he took up the offer, and built upon the what had happened in 2000.

I thought, ‘What would I dedicate a temple to?’ Not having any religion – and not being very fond of religion – I thought how in some faiths you can’t be buried in a cemetery if you’ve committed suicide. So since Burning Man welcomes so many things, the most sacred place, in the centre of the temple, should be in honour of those who’ve lost someone to suicide. By the end of the week 500 people had put names in the centre and 10,000 had put names elsewhere in the temple, the names of people they’d lost.

– David Best, speaking to The Guardian, February 2015

In keeping with this, the interior of the piece in No Spectators faithfully reproduces the names and messages left during the 2018 Burning Man festival. Even when visiting the experience in third person desktop mode, these notes, left on Post It sheet, postcards, scrawled on the wood, give an almost tangible emotional depth to the design. So much so that I had another of those rare (for me) moments when I wished I had a VR headset of my own to experience the full immersiveness of the setting while reading them.

No Spectators 2: Hybycozo by Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu

Also in the new exhibit area are reproductions of Hyperspace Bypass Construction Zone (Hybycozo for short) models from Burning Man 2014 and 2015. Designed by Yelena Filipchuk and  Serge Beaulieu. Rather than having something to do with Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, Vogons or the destruction of the Earth, these large structures are, in the artists’ words:

A series of large-scale polyhedral installations and artworks that investigate geometry through light, shadow, and perception. The project is inspired by the intersection of math, science, technology, geometry, material, and light.

– Yelena Flipchu and Serge Beaulieu on Hybycozo

However, it’s hard not to escape the feeling that Adams and his classic radio series and books / records (and the spin-off TV series and film) didn’t have some influence the project’s title…

Next to the Hybycozo display is a hall featuring four Gamelatron Bidadari. Again seen at the 2018 Burning Man, these were actually a recreation of  2013 set of instruments created by Aron Taylor Kuffner. Each features 10 Trompong kettle gongs, 12 Reyong kettle gongs, Klentong, Kempli, 4 hanging gongs, 2 ceng-ceng and 4 Kopyak from Bali and Java, all fitted with mechanical mallets on 4 powder-coated and hand-gilded steel mounts. They are genuine musical instruments, designed to be played, and the versions in Sansar are animated, producing a range of chimes in keeping with their physical world counterparts.

No Spectators 2: Stymen Lumen by FoldHaus Art Collective

The final hall of the exhibition area features three Strumen Lumen, large-scale Origami mushrooms that morph into different shapes when activated by visitors, designed by the FoldHaus Art Collective. Animating them is achieved by touching or clicking on the circular buttons on the floor by each of the Strumen.

As well as having a dedicated experience URL, the upper floor of No Spectators can be reached from the lower floor by wither touching the teleport sign at the foot of the stairs in the entrance hall, or by just walking up the stairs (which will also activate a transfer between the two experiences. Similarly, a transfer to the lower floor can be activated by touching a sign at the top of the stairs, or by starting to walk down them.

I’d personally like to see a little more thought given to the way this material is presented in order to become fully engaged throughout. Much of the art at Burning Man is both mechanical / interactive and / or carries a story with it – as with the Temple builds. As such, it would add to the sense of engagement being able to hear the story of the Temple build, perhaps in David Best’s own words, or to here a complere loop of music Aron Taylor Kuffner has composed / played on the Gamelatron Bidadari.

That said, there is enough in this extension to make No Spectators worthy of further visits, and I hope the Lab / SAAM will resume tours of the experiences in the future. Certainly, it was enough to encourage me t see how video filming works in Sansar, using both of the main exhibition spaces, and the “outdoors” area.

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Wurfi’s Little Gallery: celebrating SL photography in Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
Visiting Wurfi’s little Gallery with Silas Merlin

A while back, Linden Lab offered Sansar users a free, basic gallery building space. It’s not overly complex or particularly big; but it remains a nice freebie to have. At the time I thought it could make a neat little studio gallery for showing off SL photography; all it needed was the right artist.

Step forward Wurfi, virtual worlds explorer, blogger and photographer.

Wurfi has  – entirely independently of my own thoughts on the idea, which were never passed on to anyone – done just that. Wurfi’s Little Gallery is exactly what it says on the label: a little gallery exhibiting some of Wurfi’s SL photography; eight pieces in all (at the time of writing).

Wurfi’s Little Gallery: the bear in his art!

It’s a simple, elegant approach, the gallery sits essentially as a skybox, a spawn point inside, and the four walls adorned with Wurfi’s excellent photographs. It’s fast-loading, fun to visit, and offers a nice reminder of Second Life from within Sansar. It’s also a great little place for those who may not have tried Sansar to try out the client and the basic movement controls without being distracted or confused by Things. Just go, practice walking and admire the photography!

I’m hoping Wurfi expands it with more images from his Flickr stream in the future.

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More Star Trek in Sansar: the Roddenberry Nexus

Posted on by Inara Pey

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus – click any image for full size

In May 2018, Linden lab via their design team of Sansar Studios launched a collaboration with Roddenberry Entertainment, run by Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry Jr, the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. It saw the opening of a new experience, The Bridge of the USS Enterprise (read here for more) and came with a promise of “more to come”, probably around the time of the Star Trek Las Vegas 2018 convention (Auguest 1st through 5th, 2018). Well, in keeping with that promise, on Wednesday, August 1st, Linden Lab and Roddenberry Entertainment unveiled the next step in their Sansar collaboration.

The Roddenberry Nexus is billed as “the final frontier of fan engagement. Experience the legacy of Roddenberry in a whole new way – never-before-seen props, costumes, and so much more.” And it is a beautiful build; albeit one perhaps a little light (for the time being) on the kind of detail Trek fans like myself might like to see.

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus: The experience is fairly complex, starting at the spawn point, bottom right, proceeding through the lower exhibition space, thence via corridor to a teleporting “turbo elevator” to the upper three galleries, which are linked by a central lift platform

The spawn point for the experience is very mindful of the cabin designs seen in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP), complete with corner lighting column. Here one can listen to an introduction to the Nexus from Rod Roddenberry before passing through the waiting door into a ship’s corridor.

This leads to the first display room, which, other than the couch at the far end is a little suggestive of the engineering space found in the Enterprise-D of Next Generation fame. It i dominated by a model of the McQuarrie concept for a radically altered USS Enterprise design, which is seated on what could otherwise be taken to be representative of Geordi La Forge’s engineering table.

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus: personal memorabilia from the lives of Gene and Majel Roddenberry, reproduced in Sansar

This was the design (seen at the top of this article) being considered for one of the potential returns of Star Trek following the 1969 cancellation of what was to become known as a The Original Series (TOS). This design is perhaps most readily associated with the unproduced TV series, Star Trek: Phase II, however, as the text accompanying the model notes, originally, the design was put forward for a Star Trek film, Planet of the Titans, which was pushed to one side in 1977 in favour of the new TV series concept. While both film and series were ultimately never made, as every Trek fan will know, and as the text again confirms, the design did make two on-screen appearances in Star Trek; The Next Generation, and formed the inspiration for the Crossfield class of vessel seen in the latest incarnation of TV-based Trek, Star Trek Discovery.

Also to be found on this level are some wonderful miniatures representing props from the original series and Trek’s first big screen outing. There are also models more personal to the life of the Roddenberrys: a reproduction of the Kaypro wordprocessor model used by Gene Roddenberry after he gave up on the typewriter (a computer perhaps made most famous by science fiction author Sir Arthur C. Clarke), a copy of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry’s personalised car license plate, and a model of the infamous IDIC Medallion.

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus: recalling the 1973 Star Trek animated TV series

Beyond this, on the additional levels, reached by teleport and a working elevator, can be found more in the way of reproductions of various Trek uniforms, together with artwork from (again) ST:TMP in the form of storyboard sequences, and also from one of the more overlooked aspects of the franchise – the 1973 animated series. Additional displays along the corridors complete the initial content, while communications panels spaced throughout the experience provide audio information from a range of hosts, all of whom have ties to, or worked on, the various Trek incarnations.

In terms of the individual series and films, the Nexus is perhaps a little light: The Motion Picture gets fair coverage, but the other films – outside of things like uniforms and insignia – are almost entirely absent. However, Trek is a big subject, and much of the latter history is more than likely fairly familiar to most Trek fans, so this can perhaps be forgiven, particularly as the Nexus will be expanded over time. The infamous Kelvin Universe and Star Trek Discovery are present, albeit in a most subtle manner (check the insignia display along one corridor). It’s also probably not unfair to say that trying to cover everything  – even leaving aside 52 years of history being voluminous – is likely made more difficult by the complex web of rights involved in Trek (CBS holding the television rights, Paramount retaining the big screen rights and so on).

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus: prop from The motion Picture (l), the original TV pilot of The Cage (c) and The Original Series (Klingon disruptor, r)

Those attending  STLV 2018  have the opportunity to visit the Nexus in VR – and possibly wind an Oculus headset and “Roddenberry Goodies” in a raffle. There weren’t too many people availing themselves of the experience during my three visits – but then, I’m across the Atlantic and half a continent away from Las Vegas, so it’s unlikely my visits coincided with times when I was in the experience (05:00 and 07:00 Las Vegas time on my 2nd and 3rd visits).

As a means to attract an audience, approaches like this – offering something unusual and with a guaranteed niche audience – is a subtle way of increasing people’s awareness of Sansar, if not a guarantee of obtaining extended growth in terms of active engagement. Certainly, if it is emphasised the Nexus and The Bridge of the USS Enterprise can both be accessed from PC systems without the need for VR and the Nexus is to be grown in scope, it might encourage some of those visiting by way of STLV to keep an eye on Sansar for the future. That said, I am a little surprised that while the spawn point offers a teleport to the Hollywood Art Museum, there doesn’t appear to be an opportunity for people to hop over to The Bridge of the USS Enterprise.

Sansar: Roddenberry Nexus; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrSansar: Roddenberry Nexus: reproductions of storyboard art from Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Given the niche nature of Trek fandom in the global scheme of things, the fact that Linden Lab have struck up a working relationship with Roddenberry Entertainment led me to wonder how many Trek fans might be at the Lab. It was a question, alongside one concerning future plans for the Nexus, that I was able to put to Jason Gholston, who heads-up the Lab’s Sansar Studios.

Yes… Many Trek fans at Linden. Sansar Studios’ Torley loves Star Trek! This is just the beginning. We should see the Roddenberry Nexus expand in time! So many fantastic stories to tell and artefacts to share.

– Jason Gholston, head of Sansar Studios, on support at the Lab for Star Trek and future Nexus plans

So why not pull out your communicators / tap your combadges and beam over to the Nexus!

Experience URL

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man – Truth is Beauty, by Marco Cochrane

Monday, July 23rd saw the launch of the latest joint venture Sansar experience developed by Linden Lab’s Sansar Studios and Intel, who this time are working with The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) to present No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, an intriguing experience that helps demonstrate the potential of VR in bringing art and culture from the physical world to those not readily in a position to visit them first-hand.

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man is also the title of a physical world exhibition at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery in Washington DC, that runs through until January 21st, 2019 and which serves as the inspiration for the Sansar experience.

As the name implies, the exhibition is a celebration of art from Burning Man, the annual experiment in community and art, influenced by ten main principles, held in the Black Rock Desert of north-west Nevada (and which will be very familiar to many Second Life users). The Sansar experience offers a faithful reproduction of the exhibition in a space modelled directly on the interior of the Renwick Gallery itself.

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man – Tin Pan Dragon by Duane Flatmo

The physical world exhibition is a collaboration between SAAM, through its Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft, Nora Atkinson, and the Burning Man Project, the non-profit organisation responsible for producing the annual Burning Man event in Black Rock City, and takes its name from a saying common among those who attend the Playa the area in which Burning Man is held.

“‘No Spectators’ is a long-standing saying on Playa. You are encouraged to fully participate. It’s all about being there, being fully present, and not just observing. Two of the ten principles of Burning Man are radical participation and radical inclusivity, meaning that there are no outsiders. Everyone is part of the experience.”

– Nora Atkinson, Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Nora Atkinson has also been instrumental in bringing the exhibition to Sansar. The Smithsonian has a mission to reach a billion people globally with its art, and VR is one of the means the museum has identified as allowing them to achieve that goal – although the idea to use Sansar as a medium originated with Intel.

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man – Paper Arch by Michael Garlington and Natalia Bertotti, with the version at the Renwick inset

Over the course of the last year, the technology giant has been building a relationship with Linden Lab and Sansar. In January 2018 for example, Intel’s entire Consumer Electronics Show (CES) booth was reproduced within Sansar, together with a walk-through model of the Intel 8th generation CPU core. Nor was that all, Intel introduced the Sansar Ready Player One experience, Aech’s Garage (and reviewed here) to the world through CES, featuring it and Sansar in a keynote address at CES given by Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich.

Nor has that been all, Sansar later went on tour (so to speak) with Intel, turning up at places like the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where Sansar has again be on demonstration under the hashtag of #FutureofStorytelling, which has been strongly associated with VR.

Intel has also worked in the past the the Smithsonian, producing Beyond the Walls, a room-sized VR experience, developed for the HTC Vive system. It reproduced a garden that American writer Henry Adams, created, featuring a sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, in memory of his late wife, Marian Hooper “Clover” Adams. That experience was so successful, Intel sought to work with the Smithsonian again, and the Renwick exhibition and Sansar came across as a perfect match.

We had an idea that VR would be a compelling medium to take people to places they haven’t gone to, or will never go to, and produce really meaningful experiences.

– Raj Puran, Intel’s Director of Business Development

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man – Evotrope by Richard Wilks with Michael Conn and Victor Rodarte. The archway to the left is the teleport to the Playa experience

Within Sansar, No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man is home to reproductions of some of the iconic pieces from the Renwick’s physical world exhibition, including the towering Truth is Beauty, by Marco Cochrane, and the beautifully intricate Paper Arch by Michael Garlington and Natalia Bertotti. The latter has been especially reproduced by the artists for the Smithsonian exhibition, given the original was actually burned at Burning Man.

The startling thing with all of the pieces on display is the level of detail within them. Within VR / first person, it is akin to getting right up close and personal with the “real thing” on a 1:1 scale that is truly unlike many other art environments. Get right in close to Truth is Beauty, for example, and the extraordinary intricacy of the original’s design is revealed.

Currently, the Sansar team, working with the Smithsonian and Intel, have reproduced the ground floor exhibition spaces at the Renwick – the first floor halls are part of a project to be unveiled soon. Intel have also produced a video (below) which intriguingly shows a holographic approach to displaying some of the art: an open space where avatars can select and rez additional works. I’m uncertain if this is meant to be part of the actual Sansar experience, the pieces seen in the video are actually displayed in the “Playa” – an “outdoor” space reached by passing through an arch (and experience teleporter) at the back of the ground-floor exhibition halls – perhaps it’ll appear in the future.

As noted above, No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man is part of an extensive project between Intel and the Smithsonian to digitise more of the museum’s 157 million objects and present them through the virtual medium as transformative and engaging educational / cultural experiences – although it’s not at this time clear how extensive Sansar’s role will be within this broader project.

As a part of the work, Intel has indicated that Beyond the Walls will be re-released in 2018, featuring the art of Saint-Gaudens, together with that of sculptor Hiram Powers, painter Frederic Edwin Church and contemporary media artist Alex Prager.

The Playa is an outdoor exhibit annexed to No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man. This is a little more of a disappointment, coming over as a haphazard display without any real context for the Burning Man Playa. Given the Renwick’s own exhibition spills over into outside spaces, it would perhaps have been nice to see this experience reflect that. But perhaps there is more to come here as well; or perhaps it is simply a holding space for art to be added to the next phase of the No Spectators experience …

As someone who has a passion for real and virtual art, I can honestly say I’m looking forward to seeing how experiences like this ground within Sansar as the capabilities of the platform continue to be built out and allow for more imaginative ways by which visitors to such exhibits can interact with, and learn about, the art they present.

With Sansar, we hope not only to make the museum experience more accessible, but to also empower people to curate experiences of their own and share their unique perspectives with the world. We’re thrilled to be supporting this transformation of art and education, and we’re excited to find forward-thinking partners in Intel and the Smithsonian.

– Jason Gholston, Head of Sansar Studios

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Back into the Labyrinths of Sansar

Posted on by Inara Pey
Horizon Maze – that’s me, bottom centre, for a sense of scale

I recently wrote about my visit to the first prize winner in The Sansar Labyrinth Contest, which actually saw prizes awarded to a total of three among the various entries. Given that I did write about Abramelin Wolfe’s grand prize-winning entry The Secret of Mount Shasta, it seemed only fair I jumped back to Sansar and took a look at the second and third prize winners as well.

Horizon Maze

Horizon Maze is the third place entry, designed by Ecne. It’s an ingenious piece that, while lacking the direct challenges present in The Secret of Mount Shasta, makes up for it in presentation and design.

This is a compact, circular maze which may at first appear to be built along traditional lines. The aim is to get from the outer edge to the central ring, where a golden cup awaits. You can even freecam over the maze to get a feel for it before entering. It all sounds simple, except for two things.

Horizon Maze: the golden cup is your goal – if you can find your way to it and through the wall!

The first is that the maze comprises three concentric rings, revolving around a central axis. Moving between them requires finding one of several gateways in the ring you are in, then waiting for a gateway in the next ring to align with it, so you can step across.

The second is that the maze is on two levels – you must periodically take the stairs to the lower level and find your way around it. This may involve finding stairs back to the upper level, or it may mean finding another gate on the lower level where you can cross between rings. Nor is it all one-way; you may well have to move back out between ring in order to find the way back towards the waiting cup.

Horizon Maze: the lower tunnels

This all makes Horizon Maze a lot more complex a puzzle than first appears, so much so, that it can get a little confusing. To help people out, Ecne provides a number of maps inset into the floors of the rings at various points. These show both levels and mimic their rotation and also show where you are within the maze, allowing you to attempt to chart a course.

When you do get to the centre of the maze, there is one final challenge: getting past the wall separating you from the golden cup. The secret to doing this can b found both in the wall and on the floor of the path around it – but I’ll let you figure that out!

Ebucezam

Read the name of this entry by Tron backwards – maze cube – and you get pretty much was it is summed up in the title: a maze forming a roughly cube-like shape. The second prize winner in the competition is, like Horizon Maze, a compact design, but one which uses more of a vertical approach to its design.

Ebucezam

In parts uniformly monochrome in styling, Ebucezam is a series of box tunnels and shafts laid out within the volume of a cubic shape. The aim is to get from the single entrance on the ground level to the single large room on the far side of the maze. All of which again sounds simple enough, so where’s the catch?

The catch is that to get from front to back across the maze, you also have to go up and down. This requires using the elevators scattered around the various tunnels, as well as jumping back down shafts. The elevators are colour-coded. White elevators are open to use from the start, but any other coloured elevator – denoted by the colour of the activation switch on the wall and the glow surrounding it – requires you first obtain the corresponding colour energy node.

Ebucezam

These nodes are scattered throughout the maze, so in order to get to the far size, you must first locate the power nodes so you can activate the various elevators.  You only need to find a colour node the once, though. As you approach it, a pop-up notification will inform you have obtained it, and it will then unlock any elevator of the same colour at any time. However, it does mean a lot of moving forward, searching, then potentially backtracking to find the right elevator, making this maze harder to complete than might first appear to be the case.

Thoughts

Both Ebucezam and Horizon Maze are interesting designs; however, I admit to fining Horizon Maze the more engaging of the two. While Ebucezam is a clever design, I found the constant back and forth to find energy nodes and then unlocking elevators came a tad repetitive – it would have been nice to have a little more variation in things. That said, Horizon Maze wasn’t without a slight fault of its own; a could of times when first stating into it, I slightly mistimed my moved between rings and ended up caught in the walls and forced to try walking between them until I eventually fell and was respawned at the start point. The lesson here: time you moves carefully and double-tap run to move between rings!

Ebucezam

Nevertheless, for those looking for something a little different to do in Sansar, Horizon Maze and Ebucezam are worth dropping into and trying out. Congratulations to both Ecne and Tron on their designs and prizes.

Experience URLS and Links